As he was driven up to the door in a cab belonging to the squire there was Mountjoy, standing before the house.  He too had thought of the difficulties, and had made up his mind that it would not do for him to meet his late foe without some few words intended for the making of peace.  “I hope you are well, Mr. Annesley,” he said, offering his hand as the other got out of the cab.  “It may be as well that I should apologize at once for my conduct.  I was at that moment considerably distressed, as you may have heard.  I had been declared to be penniless, and to be nobody.  The news had a little unmanned me, and I was beside myself.”

“I quite understand it; quite understand it,” said Annesley, giving his hand.  “I am very glad to see you back again, and in your father’s house.”  Then Mountjoy turned on his heel, and went through the hall, leaving Harry to the care of the butler.  The captain thought that he had done enough, and that the affair in the street might now be regarded as a dream.  Harry was taken up to shake hands with the old man, and in due time came down to dinner, where he met Mr. Grey and the young doctor.  They were all very civil to him, and upon the whole, he spent a pleasant evening.  On the next day, about noon, the squire sent for him.  He had been told at breakfast that it was the squire’s intention to see him in the middle of the day, and he had been unable, therefore, to join Mountjoy’s shooting-party.

“Sit down, Mr. Annesley,” said the old man.  “You were surprised, no doubt, when you got my invitation?”

“Well, yes; perhaps so; but I thought it very kind.”

“I meant to be kind; but still, it requires some explanation.  You see, I am such an old cripple that I cannot give invitations like anybody else.  Now you are here I must not eat and drink with you, and in order to say a few words to you I am obliged to keep you in the house till the doctor tells me I am strong enough to talk.”

“I am glad to find you so much better than when I was here before.”

“I don’t know much about that.  There will never be a ‘much better’ in my case.  The people about me talk with the utmost unconcern of whether I can live one month or possibly two.  Anything beyond that is quite out of the question.”  The squire took a pride in making the worst of his case, so that the people to whom he talked should marvel the more at his vitality.  “But we won’t mind my health now.  It is true, I fear, that you have quarrelled with your uncle.”

“It is quite true that he has quarrelled with me.”

“I am afraid that that is more important.  He means, if he can, to cut you out of the entail.”

“He does not mean that I shall have the property if he can prevent it.”

“I don’t think very much of entails myself,” said the squire.  “If a man has a property he should be able to leave it as he pleases; or—­or else he doesn’t have it.”

“That is what the law intends, I suppose,” said Harry.